This invention relates generally to a shirt pressing apparatus and more particularly to a machine having adjustable sleeve expanders which enable the machine to be used for pressing either long or short sleeve shirts.
Shirt pressing machines available in the marketplace have been limited to finishing long sleeve shirts. Generally those commercial machines include a buck for receiving a shirt to be pressed, the buck being movable between an exposed loading station at which an operator places a shirt on the buck, and a pressing chamber within which the shirt is exposed to steam and pressurized air during the pressing operation. Mounted at the side of the buck are clamps or grippers for gripping the cuffs of the long sleeve shirt and extension arms for extending the grippers away from the shirt during the shirt loading operation at the operator's station. When the buck is moved into the pressing chamber the grippers hold the sleeve in slight tension away from the shirt's body during the pressing operation. At the completion of the pressing operation, the buck is returned to the operator's station, the tensioning arms are relaxed and the shirt is removed from the buck. Typical prior commercial machines are the Model SBC-BV machines which have been marketed by the Assignee of this application, and also pressing machines such as those illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,692,326.
Those prior art machines, however, have been limited to pressing long sleeve shirts and have not been adaptable to use with short sleeve shirts.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,568,900 illustrates a machine for pressing either long or short sleeve shirts, but the adjustable sleeve expander assemblies by which this is accomplished are rather complex in construction and thus are not cost effective.
Thus, a need exists in the marketplace for a machine which includes adjustable sleeve expanders which are economical and easy to manufacture and maintain, and which are readily adjustable for use with either long or short sleeve shirts. The novel invention disclosed and claimed in this application was developed to satisfy that need.